


Mercy

by notzenyatta



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 04:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10506012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notzenyatta/pseuds/notzenyatta
Summary: “You were very badly hurt.”Zenyatta explains, striving for patience but only sounding worried. Genji gives him a vacant thumbs-up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i am posting this because i feel bad for not updating aint no sunshine for three entire weeks. first fic not to have a stupidly long title

 

Genji doesn’t wake up all at once like normal people do, he wakes up like a computer rebooting, or maybe a virus eating away at a computer. That seems more accurate. Separate parts of him awaken one by one, his dreams and reality bleeding together for nearly a horrifying minute until he is out of that specific limbo and in either one world or another. 

 

Its god awful, but he’s learned to cope with it.

 

It all gets thrown upon one waking, when a fluorescent lit night in the Overwatch medical wing soon after his death pixelates back into the same thing, but more urgent. Bright lights, more pain. Angela screaming, sounding older than he remembers from dreams like these. Sobs are being ripped from his throat before he realizes it. He tries to wake up again, then lucid dream, as all the while he’s being plugged back into a system of tubes and stuck full of needles and hung up like the stiff formal robes he has to wear and then Hanzo is standing beside him and father won’t hear about it because he left them that morning, soul blown out the open window to let in spring air and body leaving nothing more than a brown leaf on the narrow bed. 

 

This time when Genji wakes up, cherry blossoms blowing by morph into the staccato beeps of a heart monitor, and Hanzo reaches out, takes his hand, and the hand becomes an Omnic’s instead. Far more comforting and realistic than his brother’s. His dream trickles down until all thats left is that queer sensation under his feet, like he’s standing on soggy ground. 

 

When his vision comes back online he can see Zenyatta before him, kneeling on the cold floor with his forehead pressed into the mattress that Genji rests on. He looks like he’s deep in a prayer, and the only thing that would suggest otherwise is the possibly sacrilegious position of his hands, both grasping onto Genji’s own like a lifeline. Maybe he is in prayer. Genji observes his omnic, smiling faintly at his beauty, even in such a tragic looking pose. He wishes he would look less sad. Its unbecoming, although he feels that Zenyatta couldn’t ever look anything but gorgeous. 

 

A fond hum escapes his lips, and the Omnic’s head snaps up, urgency in the rigidness of his spine and grip of his hands. 

 

“Your sad.. sad-ness. Its, uh. A, not a good look.”

 

Nailed it. Literacy is whimsical today, but Genji feels like he’s communicated himself well enough. Zenyatta gasps, breathless for air he will never need. 

 

“Genji! My moon, all my stars, how are you feeling?”

 

slightly cold hands flutter over his chest gracefully, then rest on his forehead and cheek, turning him to face Zenyatta’s permanent facial expression. He still looks worried, but its not like Genji isn’t enjoying the attention. 

 

“Never better.”

 

Genji says, and then moves, and then consequently growls in pain. Zenyatta urgently settles him back into bed, taking his hands in both of his. Genji likes the way the rubber pads of his thumbs feel stroking against his wrists, and smiles contentedly despite the lingering ache.

 

“You were very badly hurt.”

 

Zenyatta explains, striving for patience but only sounding worried. Genji gives him a vacant thumbs-up.

 

“Do you have any pain? Should I get Mercy?”

 

Despite the pleasant and only vaguely aching fog Genji is settled into, something strikes him as odd. Something Zenyatta said… something about Angela?

 

A memory displaces itself from his sluggish thoughts. Zenyatta, after recently partaking in what must have been the most polite, concise, and deadly argument in the entire history of the world with Angela, only calling her Mercy for nearly a month. He can’t remember what the argument was about, specifically. Knowing the two of them it probably involved Angela making deliberate and heartless decisions on the battlefield, leaving those close to death to die in flames while those who could be saved were evacuated. And Zenyatta…

 

Yes, now he remembers. Zenyatta, his brave omnic with a heart of gold, braved the fire to rescue those who Angela had deemed doomed, transcending in the heart of destructive flames and casting the near-casualties and tragically dead in gold light. 

 

It had nearly killed him, according to Angela. And Jack, and Winston. Genji, however, knew better. Zenyatta had fared worse and bounced back within days, and with his recovery he was finally fit to express his distaste with Angela’s methods of battlefield medicine. 

 

Angela’s opinion was that its more economical to save those who are savable and wast no time on the nearly dead, as they are already a lost cause. 

 

“What if one of those lost causes was your family? Someone you love? Every life is savable.”

 

“Perhaps there is a mistake in clinging onto what is clearly not. It is easy to believe that the due process of life and death is simple and beautiful when one is hidden away in a monastery.”

 

It was a low blow. Genji had witnessed the argument from a doorway, hidden in shadow. He recalls Zenyatta visibly recoiling, looking like he had been burned by the flames of battle after all. Angela recoiled too, obviously regretting what she had said as soon as she said it. But for all of her cruelty, albeit unintentional, it is doubtful she expected the peaceful omnic to lash back.

 

“Perhaps there is a mistake in growing cold to what is savable. When did you first start seeing human lives as numbers?"

 

Genji held his breath as Angela walked right by where he was hidden.

 

“What’d she do?”

 

Genji asks, as soon as Zenyatta visibly notices his slip of the metaphorical tongue. 

 

“We will talk later. Right now my first concern is your-“

 

Genji raises a finger to the seam in Zenyatta’s faceplate, and even though this does absolutely nothing to hinder his vocalization he ceases to speak anyways.

 

“Give me the dirt. Fill me in.”

 

Zenyatta gives him the blankest and most exasperated stare possible. 

 

“You are a gossip.”

 

“You can’t shame me, Zen. You can’t shame the shameless."

 

Zenyatta brings a hand up to card through Genji’s disarrayed hair, thumbing at his ear gently. Theres a soft whirring and clicking sound coming from his sternum, a telltale sign of his thoughts ordering themselves around before he speaks.

 

“It’s nothing to be concerned about. We simply had a disagreement about-“

 

Suddenly he seems to cave in on himself, chest collapsing as his head comes to rest on Genji’s chest. Confused, the cyborg brings his arms around him, stroking over warm metal. Genji silently curses himself. Had he not been drugged out of his mind he would have noticed that something was wrong sooner.

 

“Oh, Genji… I… She wanted to leave you behind and wait for a second craft to pick you up- there were citizens, she wanted to evacuate them first…”

 

Zenyatta’s hands fist in the sheets below him.

 

“You were injured, badly. Jack wanted me to go with the citizens and transcend so they could be healed but I… I couldn’t just leave you there…”

 

Genji slowly brings his arms around him, letting one hand pet over Zenyatta’s back. His brain is too foggy to  _think_  of what to do to help...

 

“I… I was too scared to leave you. There were citizen doctors who said they would help you, but I…”

 

“Zen…”

 

“I was selfish, I was  _scared_ , I refused to follow orders, and-"

 

“ _Zen_ ”

 

"One of the citizens died on the airlift- where I was supposed to be- Winston said that she would have died anyways but I- I can’t help but-"

 

Genji takes Zenyatta’s face in his hands, gently but firmly lifting him from his chest to meet his gaze. Zenyatta turns his face into one of Genji’s hands, shaking, and Genji opens his mouth to comfort and…

 

Just doesn’t know what the hell to say. In part its his condition, the IV feeding oxytocin or fucking whatever the hell it is into his bloodstream, but its also because of the actual difficulty of the situation. If he tells Zenyatta he did the right thing, he’s typical, self-intrested. its obvious that he would say that. If he hadn’t than Genji would be dead, most likely. But how would he ever tell Zenyatta that what he did was wrong? What kind of monster would he be to leave his companion with the guilt of a human life that he had not inherently contributed to the end of?

 

Genji pulls Zenyatta back against his chest, head tucked under his chin. Something inside him, despite the state of near-sedation he’s in,  _boils_  with disgust at whoever would put his omnic in such a position. 

 

“Oh  _Zenyatta_ , no one blames you. How could anyone be asked to make such a decision?”

 

Genji takes one of Zenyatta’s hands in his own, rubbing his thumb over the back of it. 

 

“I… I never want you to loose faith in the good thats in the world. Thats why I first decided I trusted you… After spending my life with such… nihilists, I was amazed that there could be someone who saw all the possible beauty in this life, but knew when he had to fight for what was right.”

 

Genji presses a soft kiss to the hand in his. Zenyatta makes a soft noise against his sternum.

 

“Don’t let this place get to you. Don’t let them make you believe that theres shame in seeing lives as something valuable. You might be the only one on this damn base who I’ve seen kneel before someone he’s killed.”

 

It’s the truth. When Zenyatta is forced to take a life, he always, always finds time to briefly kneel at the ground before the corpse, as if offering it his sincerest apologies. As if asking some higher power for forgiveness for what he has done. He always looks like he’s sending them off, hands spread in a silent plea of regret and gold light haloing his head as he bows it to the empty shell of a person left behind by his actions. 

 

“N’ Winston wouldn’t lie to you. If he says she wouldn’t have made it, he means it.”

 

Zenyatta gently presses his face into the crook of Genji’s neck.

 

“I could never bear to loose you. I was so scared, Genji…”

 

“I know… But I’m here now. I’m here, holding you. See? Zen, you didn’t do anything wrong. 

 

He doesn’t get a response for a bit, and then realizes that the omnic has fallen asleep against his chest. Not the most comfortable position, but who would he be to deny him this? He shifts around a bit until he’s comfortable, head raised comfortably against the pillows and both arms resting on his partner’s back. He allows himself to drift off, comforted by the slight clicking of Zenyatta’s machinery and the faint tapping of rain outside the window. Whatever he might experience as he sleeps, he is sure that what he waked up to will shake him out of his fears.

**Author's Note:**

> yippie-ki-ay kids i absolutely suck !!!!!!!! i haven't updated aint no sunshine in three fucking weeks. I wanna post what I have of chapter four so far but its so SHORT BUT PLEASE TRUST ME i haven't forgotten about it and I am just struggling with writers block. So anyways to thank u all of being so patient with me I am posting this that I have been working on for a while. cool. 
> 
> Zenyatta and Angela don't always get along. Zen sometimes lets himself think that angie doesn't care about genji but she does, just, uh, not really as much, and she's also pretty bad at showing it. I want to write her more but its really challenging for me, so I'm still woking on that.
> 
> I wanted 2 write a thing where genji is not the one being comforted because theres not ENOUGH of that here and i am tired of it. 
> 
> hmmmMMMM ALSO OK IM REALLY FUCKING PROUD OF THIS TITLE. UGH. MORE PROUD THAN I SHOULD BE . cause like zen is giving mercy to like literally everyone and his mercifulness is causing problems and also he refuses to call angela anything but mercy hhhmmmMMMM IM NOT THAT CLEVER BUT LET ME BE HAPPY WITH THIS
> 
> in other very unrelated news i cut my own hair quite short and my family still has not noticed . also we went out for dinner and our food came over burnt to the point of inedibility so we sent it back and it came over again, still burnt. wild. we just ate it at that point. 
> 
> aanywayyyyys comments are appreciated and also!!!! rec me some fics!!!!!!!!! i feel like i have read ALL of them so please, I'm a dying man. 
> 
> thank you for reading!!!!!


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